If you have a pro camera and it can do so many things by itself then why to call oneself a professional or an expert..photographer.

MRP.

Why?

Because in the end, it's the photographer that takes the photo, not the camera. He/she's the one who selects the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, metering mode, AF mode, etc. The camera can do it itself in "AUTO", but it's rarely as reliable as if the photographer takes control.

It's not because you have a pro camera that you become a pro photographer. It's like having a McLaren F1 sports car. Or even a Formula 1 race car. I doesn't make you a professional driver. But a F1 professional driver will have a hard time competing against other drivers if he's driving a Dodge Charger while other drivers have F1 race cars.

What I'm talking about is actually how a tool suits the needs of a photographer. I have a power drill at home. Black and Decker, $30, and it only works with a cord. Why am I not buying a better drill? Because I only use this tool a couple of times in a year.

But for the pro construction worker, that drill might not (and probably won't) cut it. He/she's gonna buy the $400 SuperXBrand powerdrill that's got much more power, that uses Li-Ion batteries that can work 8 hrs on a single charge and in freezing temperatures.

Could this pro worker still get good results with that $30 drill I have? Sure. He/she's a pro. That person will get great results using a hand drill or a screwdriver, because that individual has the competence to do so. But the better tool will help doing it faster, with less hassle.

And he/she's gonna find it a pain to use my drill because it doesn't fits his/her needs. Plug, drill. Unplug, move away, plug, drill. Use a screwdriver to complete the job because the cheaper powertool can't drill through that metal sheet. And wish he/she had a better tool.

And that's why people complain about the K-5. It's a great DSLR, but it may not be good enough for some people, because it lacks a few features. For some, it's the tethered capture support (holy crap, how can Pentax NOT implement that into the K-5? it's SO easy to do...), for others, it's a full frame sensor to get clean pictures at ISO 12800 (like the D4) or 1 stop of additional dynamic range.

(By the way, that LX camera used film, and negative film had about 12-15 stops of DR with loads of contrast, while the best APS-C DSLRs have 10-14 stops of DR with low contrast or 7-10 stops with great contrast. Now that 1 stop of additional DR can make a huge difference for a pro shooting for a national advertisement campaign. It's also why some will skip the FF and go straight to the MF, has it provides even better color and tones reproduction, sometimes up to 2 bit more color detail than the best FF DSLR).

Let's face it, the K-5 is a great camera, probably the best APS-C DSLR available right now (on par with the D7000). But it's not flawless, and Canon and Nikon users also complain about their 7D and D7000. The difference, they can go for a 6D, 5D Mk III or D600, D800/D800E for about one or two thousand dollars more. The Pentax users who aren't satisfied with their K-5 need to switch brand (or spend an extra $7500 if the 645D fits their needs).

Pentax can make a better, more professional camera, and some people just want that.

They are people complaining because they can't use a camera properly and people complaining because the product doesn't match their requirements. For the first kind, a new, FF Pentax DSLR will not stop them complaining. For the second kind, it might, if the camera is up to the game. And if a FF Pentax DSLR is released, I'm sure it will be on par with its Canon and Nikon rivals.

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If photography can be considered like painting, then I'm still at the preschool "paint with your fingers" level.

OK, Tigrebleu, you and many others who don't already MAY think I'm completely schizophrenic after this post, but even after everything I posted in SUPPORT of Wildkat's post, I agree with MOST of what you just posted, as well.

How, you ask, can someone support two seemingly opposing points of view? Because they're BOTH VALID given varied and different circumstances....

In order to keep my last post from going any longer, I failed to mention what the OTHER pro shooters profiled in Tom Ang's Digital Photography Master Class said they shoot with. But I'm going to now, for comparison's sake. Bear in mind, once again, that this book was published in 2008, and for all we know some of these interviews were made in '07, so the cameras these folks were using are going to be "dated," and I have no idea what was state-of-the-art then, as I was still shooting with a Panny Lumix DMC-FZ30 at that point. BUT the varied cameras used by different folks for different types of professional photography shows that what someone NEEDS for a particular type of professional photography can vary, as well... I'm going to go in the order listed in the book:

TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY: Clay Enos, USA -- Three Nikon D200s -- various F2.8 or faster lenses; favorite being a 50 F1.4, five 1 GB CF flash cards (I list the cards only because by 2007 even I had two 2 GB cards, albeit SD. He said you can't fall in love with your camera any more, only your lenses.

DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY: Altaf Qadri, Kashmir India -- Canon 5D and three zoom from 16-35 to 24-70 to 70-200 mm... almost all available light work. He still used film for some work.

LANDSCAPE AND NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY: Tamao Funahashi, Japan -- Sony Cybershot R1 with conversion lenses and filters. She said the only thing she hates about digital photography tech is that it makes the current stuff obsolete every few weeks.

ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY: Inigo Bujedo Aguirre, Spain -- (NOTE: Ang started this section by emphasizing that more than any other discipline, architectural photography requires the most demanding equipment, both cameras and lenses) --Large format Linhof Technikardan 5x4 in. camera with 75 ~ 300 mm lenses -- all by Schneider. He said he also uses a Hasselblad with fo, 80 and 100 mm lenses and then uses a couple of high-end scanners to make his images digital.

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY: Marion Hogl, Germany -- Canon 1D Mark II and Mark III and a 20D, various expensive Canon lenses, both long and short (how much ya think she paid for a Canon EF 500mm F4.0 L IS???), plus both the 1.4 and 2x Canon extenders.

FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY: Emily Allchurch, Britain -- This is the last section, and an interesting one. It's also the only one where he DIDN'T ask what equipment the photographer uses... It really doesn't seem germaine to the work she does, anyway. She creates works of art with photography, ans some of these involve very many different photos...For instance, on Pg. 335 theres a shot of her "Tower of London" (which I really feel we need to see much larger). She said it's an "homage" to Bruegel's 1563 "Tower of Babel," took more than three months to complete and includes more than 500 different photos taken from around London and by the end more than 1,500 merged layers in Photoshop! On the following two pages is a gorgeous pastel "watercolor" she made in 2005 as part of a BBC4 series project where they gave artists digital cameras and had them work with a picture from them. She took the image with a Sony Ericsson mobile phone camera, then recreated a modern version of Whistler's 1872 Nocturne in Blue and Silver -- Cremone Lights. It's just STUNNING!

My point is that... it depends.Tigrebleu, I think your comparison with the $30 corded drill is a bit too "straw man" for this argument. I have a pretty decent Ryobi 18V drill-driver and a 5-amp corded Mikita drill-driver. BOTH far exceed my home needs most of the time, but on occasion, they're just what I need. Yet neither is up to what a full-time professional would need, which would likely be the $359 24-volt Milwaukee version, or better.

My big concern with all the complaints about Pentax not going FF yet is that I'm not certain they have the $$$ to do both that AND continue to provide one of the best APS-C experiences for the rest of us. Those of us who have many thousand$$$ invested in lenses that will vignette in FF aren't too likely to move to FF unless we HAVE to...

The fact that after two years with the K-5, rather than coming out with a TRUE new model (as they did from the K-7 to the K-5, Pentax came out with the K-5II -- which I DON'T see as being worth $300 more on the current market, never mind another $100 for a version with something TAKEN OFF the camera -- HOW DO they justify charging more for taking something OFF the camera???).

That, to me, said Pentax was in financial trouble, even under Ricoh (it's quite likely Ricoh is making its Pentax division show profits on its own, as most corporate divisions are forced to do). I was looking around for the K-5 IIs on Amazon -- couldn't even find it -- but in the process I found the X-5, A 26-x "bridge camera" (what I've been calling "mega-zoom") Pentax just released last August. I hadn't even heard of it before... Hadn't seen it in magazines, or heard about it here, unlike the other new one that has only a 4X zoom. That Pentax is releasing more P&S stuff and NOT more DSLR stuff worries me. It wouldn't if I didn't know that Ricoh paid only $120 Million for Hoya's Pentax camera division when they bought them. That's pocket change in the global corporate economy (Mark Zuckerberg just gave $100 Million JUST to the City of Newark, N.J., for its schools!).

I'm pretty happy with 16 MP, but there are times I may want to print bigger. I think a lot of us would like to see a 24 MP APS-C with focus peaking, more than 11-point focusing, the improved low-light focusing on the K-5II, maybe an articulating screen (if you've never had one, you don't know what you've missed -- but at least one coated with Gorilla Glass, or something), tethering capability, maybe a couple more things I haven't thought of.

I still agree the K-5 is possibly the best APS-C on the market. Doesn't mean there's not lots of room for improvement. And I don't see where the K-5II was "it." And I fear if Pentax puts its eggs into a FF basket, it WILL be at the expense of advancing its APS-C line.

Jeff

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A word is worth 1/1000th of a picture... Maybe that's why I use so many words!

^WHS^

Jack

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STREET PHOTOGRAPHY DOCUMENTARY: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kkHKP4Gnd0(*UPDATED NOV 16th*)MY BLOG.... www.nakedmanonawire.blogspot.com****MY EMAIL ADDRESS IN IS MY 'VIEW PLAN'****It's amazing what one can do when one doesn't know what one is doing